What a way to let people know what is deep down my heart! I will share my views on Chinese metaphysics with my audience without reservation. Please treat this blog as a public park where friends can exchange ideas.

Monday, March 31, 2008

My greatest satisfaction

My greatest satisfaction comes from the fact that a lot of people, after studying with me, have changed their lives to ones that are full of success and joy. Of course, they have improved their lives because they worked hard. My contribution was just to point to them the path to take and to arm them with the tools to go along.

There are also cases of failure. Whom to blame? What to blame?

The same axe can cut down a tree but can cut one's own feet if used improperly.

The losers may curse the axe or even the axe-supplier. What a pity!

When Feng Shui does not work for you, it is because you applied the knowledge in the wrong way due to misunderstanding. Study hard, think hard. Don't jump to premature conclusions.

Like Riceles, studying with you has been my greatest satisfaction and it has definitely changed my life for the better. And with the tools you've given and the knowledge about how to use them, no challenge seems too big to overcome.

Well, I can say that I am one of these "happy" people :o) I work hard but I have got quite good and efficient tools!My life changed sooo much! I will always remember your words supporting me in my work on correspondence courses, your trust in me and your kind help (that is you who helped me with picking up the good date for starting my business (I had no idea about XKDG in those days...), do you remember? :o)

The topic of feng shui or 4 pillars not working is actually interesting.

People not using tools properly is probably an element.But I also think FS and 4P cannot be expected to work 100% accurate all the time.

Much like weather prediction, many times the prediction is wrong, but that does not mean the entire meteorology gets discarded as useless and false.

We can say that in European summer there is great potential for warm and sunny days. It is true, but some years the summer is mostly raining and lukewarm.

In same way, we may see in a person's 4P that there is great potential for a succesful period coming up, we can enhance it with the feng shui.But still that person may experience a *very rainy summer* and nothing special happening.

Economic predictions can be equally inaccurate as we can see in the news recently. This does not mean the field of economy has to be discarded as false.

It is good to keep this in mind when we apply feng shui or study 4P.Recently I saw somebody propose the term "human uncertainty principle".It means we can never totally predict those domains that have a human factor in them.

I agree with a lot of what you say where 4P is concerned because the outcome is largely dependent on how the person lives their life. I don't think the word "predict" should be used in either Feng Shui or 4P. Interpretation is a better word.

I think the point was really that sometimes people use the tools improperly and instead of looking for their mistake, they either blame the tool or the person who taught them how to use the tool. Not too infrequently, people may even just make up a new interpretation as a way of explaining an undesired result without pausing to consider that they may have overlooked something.

This something I try to convey to my students too. That if they apply Feng Shui principles and the result is bad, then don't say that Feng Shui doesn't work - go find your mistake!

There should always be improvement if Feng Shui principles are applied correctly.

Limitations of ScienceAstrologers often point to what they see as the limitations of science that stop it detecting astrological effects. They claim that science is impersonal or unspiritual or insensitive to deeper truths. Or they claim that astrology involves subtle factors not yet known to science. But science requires only that events be observable in some way. And if astrologers can observe the claimed effects, so can scientists.

So the limitations are straightforward -- if no possible observation could rule out a particular claim, the claim is untestable and science is irrelevant. As is the claim in the first place -- if nothing can show it is wrong, then by the same token nothing can show it is right.

Science of course is subject to greed, jealousy and politics like any other human activity. But the over-riding insistence that issues be decided by careful testing means that scientific knowledge is ultimately self-correcting. It may take years or decades, but ultimately errors in science do not survive. How does astrology compare?

AstrologyCampion considers four ways of defining astrology, namely as (1) a science that seeks empirical answers to questions, (2) a neo science that seeks empirical validation of its ideas, (3) a pseudo science that does false science, and (4) a humanity that interprets data. Note how these four are not the same as the previous three (astrology = its results, its tools, or what astrologers do).

Campion himself prefers (4). And its merits are obvious -- by confining itself to interpretation, astrology is elevated above any criticism based on grubby empiricism. (I come back to this point later). But rather than trying to define science and astrology in absolute terms, it seems better to consider what distinguishes one from the other.

Two possibilitiesOne possibility is consistency -- science demands it but astrology does not. Thus science would not tolerate tropical and sidereal zodiacs having the same meaning, but astrology sidesteps the issue by assuming each operates at a different level. This sort of thing happens all the time. Astrology (but not science) proceeds via assumptions. So anything goes. In fact in their 1979 critique of astrology, the astronomers Culver and Ianna were so struck by the typical astrologer's confident use of glaring inconsistencies that they labelled astrology the "Gemini Syndrome" after Gemini's supposed propensity for being two-faced.

Another possibility is level -- science is material stuff, astrology is soul stuff. This means that souls are a necessary component of astrology, and that astrology is essentially a religion. Such ideas would certainly distinguish astrology from science, but many (if not most) astrologers including Campion would disagree that astrology is essentially a religion. Areas of dispute can hardly form the basis for reliable distinction.

Main distinctionIn fact the main distinction between science and astrology is their attitude towards the testing of claims. Science tests but astrology essentially does not, and scientific tests are typically deemed inadequate or the results are ignored. Science (but not astrology) insists that knowledge be based on observation. In astrology (but not in science) anything goes, generally with tradition as the default option if difficulties arise (as below). No astrologer ever prejudiced an idea by insisting on proper tests. The comment made in 1950 by ace researcher Donald Bradley still applies: "all improvements are welcome so long as the complacent surface of tradition is not disturbed."

Note that this difference is strictly one of attitude towards testing. So we cannot say that astrology is scientific because it uses a science-based ephemeris, any more than a book is scientific because it uses a science-based printing technology. Nor can we say that astrology is a science because both use symbols, albeit in different ways, namely qualitatively (JU = expansiveness) vs quantitatively (r = correlation coefficient). What we can say is that astrology's attitude towards testing means it has no resources by which error could be detected.

So science = testing and observation, astrology = anything goes, and there is no real overlap. For convenience let me now define art as any directed activity not a science, for example the activity of drawing and painting. (Do not confuse this with other definitions of art such as art = art objects eg paintings, or art = the expression of feeling, or art = a special skill eg the art of conversation; nor with craft, the skilled making of objects eg jewellery; the whole point of my choosing this definition is that it excludes science.) We can now say that astrology is entirely an art as defined above, and entirely not a science. Which is consistent with Campion's preferred definition of astrology as a humanity (an art that humanises).

Implications of an art formIf astrology is entirely an art as defined above, and entirely not a science, then the scientific approach must by definition be rejected. Of course many astrologers already do this. But they do not observe the consequences, which means not making testable statements and not making claims like "Jupiter indicates expansiveness."

Note the problem: Without a sound scientific basis, which astrology is now by definition incapable of having, nobody can legitimately claim that Jupiter indicates anything. All that could be said is something like "the ancient Greeks thought that Jupiter indicates expansiveness, but nobody knows if this is actually true." Anything else would turn astrology into a pseudoscience -- an art form falsely posing as a science, as when the testing of testable claims is rejected or ignored.